Films4U International (EIS)

pauline_88

masonic said:

pauline_88 said:

I invested 5k of my hard earned money into the above company in 2020 for a 3 year period. I’ve never received my share certificates. I’m unable to get replies from them either phone or email. The company were using the money in the film industry to promote & make films. They promised EIS tax relief but it took them nearly a year to get the forms out to us, now completed and returned to HMRC.Not sure they are worth the paper they are written on.  I believe I was mis sold this investment as I was not a tax payer at that time & did not meet their investor category however was still encouraged to invest. 

Has anyone else made this investment & if so how confident are you they are bono fide. Unfortunately the investment was not covered by the FSCS. I’m assuming I’ve lost this money, but would like to hear from anyone else who has made the investment? Thanks

Your money is probably gone I'm afraid. Many legitimate early stage companies seeking crowdfunding fail within a few years, with investors losing everything. They can still be of value to high risk investors, as for every dozen or so failures, there is the chance of investing in one that makes enough to cover the cost to the investor of all the failures. This company, however, has an FCA warning as indicated above, suggesting they are not operating legitimately and may therefore be a scam.

After your woes with Fluid ISA Bond, it is disheartening to learn you've been caught out a second time with a failed non-mainstream "investment". Was it just those two, or are there more?

Masonic… thanks for your comment. I was contacted by the same agent I invested with Fluid and at that time all was going well with Fluid and I was getting my quarterly interest no problem so had built up confidence with this individual. I have been caught hook, line and sinker! A total of £15K gone! Thankfully no more. I was definitely mid sold both investments as I did not fall into any of their investor categories. If there was some hope of getting anything back on the basis of mis selling I’d go for it! 

CKhalvashi

pauline_88 said:

masonic said:

pauline_88 said:

I invested 5k of my hard earned money into the above company in 2020 for a 3 year period. I’ve never received my share certificates. I’m unable to get replies from them either phone or email. The company were using the money in the film industry to promote & make films. They promised EIS tax relief but it took them nearly a year to get the forms out to us, now completed and returned to HMRC.Not sure they are worth the paper they are written on.  I believe I was mis sold this investment as I was not a tax payer at that time & did not meet their investor category however was still encouraged to invest. 

Has anyone else made this investment & if so how confident are you they are bono fide. Unfortunately the investment was not covered by the FSCS. I’m assuming I’ve lost this money, but would like to hear from anyone else who has made the investment? Thanks

Your money is probably gone I'm afraid. Many legitimate early stage companies seeking crowdfunding fail within a few years, with investors losing everything. They can still be of value to high risk investors, as for every dozen or so failures, there is the chance of investing in one that makes enough to cover the cost to the investor of all the failures. This company, however, has an FCA warning as indicated above, suggesting they are not operating legitimately and may therefore be a scam.

After your woes with Fluid ISA Bond, it is disheartening to learn you've been caught out a second time with a failed non-mainstream "investment". Was it just those two, or are there more?

Masonic… thanks for your comment. I was contacted by the same agent I invested with Fluid and at that time all was going well with Fluid and I was getting my quarterly interest no problem so had built up confidence with this individual. I have been caught hook, line and sinker! A total of £15K gone! Thankfully no more. I was definitely mid sold both investments as I did not fall into any of their investor categories. If there was some hope of getting anything back on the basis of mis selling I’d go for it! 

If it was an advised investment (which is a legal term) then you may have a claim against the IFA in the case if fraud, however its likely that proceedings would have to be brought against the directors for this to happen.

EIS is a legitimate scheme, however as far as I'm aware, no legitimate company that has utilised this type of investment has EIS in the past has had this in their name.

masonic

pauline_88 said:

masonic said:

pauline_88 said:

I invested 5k of my hard earned money into the above company in 2020 for a 3 year period. I’ve never received my share certificates. I’m unable to get replies from them either phone or email. The company were using the money in the film industry to promote & make films. They promised EIS tax relief but it took them nearly a year to get the forms out to us, now completed and returned to HMRC.Not sure they are worth the paper they are written on.  I believe I was mis sold this investment as I was not a tax payer at that time & did not meet their investor category however was still encouraged to invest. 

Has anyone else made this investment & if so how confident are you they are bono fide. Unfortunately the investment was not covered by the FSCS. I’m assuming I’ve lost this money, but would like to hear from anyone else who has made the investment? Thanks

Your money is probably gone I'm afraid. Many legitimate early stage companies seeking crowdfunding fail within a few years, with investors losing everything. They can still be of value to high risk investors, as for every dozen or so failures, there is the chance of investing in one that makes enough to cover the cost to the investor of all the failures. This company, however, has an FCA warning as indicated above, suggesting they are not operating legitimately and may therefore be a scam.

After your woes with Fluid ISA Bond, it is disheartening to learn you've been caught out a second time with a failed non-mainstream "investment". Was it just those two, or are there more?

Masonic… thanks for your comment. I was contacted by the same agent I invested with Fluid and at that time all was going well with Fluid and I was getting my quarterly interest no problem so had built up confidence with this individual. I have been caught hook, line and sinker! A total of £15K gone! Thankfully no more. I was definitely mid sold both investments as I did not fall into any of their investor categories. If there was some hope of getting anything back on the basis of mis selling I’d go for it! 

I'm fairly confident this would have been marketed in the same way as most other mini-bonds, where you self-certify your investor category and agree that you will abide by anything in that investor statement, putting all responsibility onto you. You'll also have needed to declare that you understand there is a high risk of losing some or all of your money and they would have recommended you seek your own financial advice if unsure of anything. The standard wording used met FCA requirements. The only success story was a group of investors from London Capital & Finance, but their situation (sales calls that the FCA judged to have crossed the line into unauthorised financial advice) was rather unusual. Did you at any point have a conversation with anyone, who explored your personal circumstances with you and specifically told you that this product was suitable for you? Was this money that you could not take risks with and did you tell them that?

pauline_88

Thanks for the further info Masonic.. it was such a long while ago but I do recall saying it’s money I have from the sale of my property. I’m hindsight I was a bit blasé but felt confident that both were worthwhile investments. The Films4U I did umm and ahhh over as Covid was just out there & investing money at that time was I considered risky however she said streaming whilst in lockdown & films being purchased was big business during lockdown and the film industry was booming 🤷‍♀️. I believe the liquidators assigned  for Fluid have sent a report to the Insolvency Service as I did complete a creditors questionnaire outlining the miss selling of this product to me. I’m so guilty of not reading the small print! I’ve had to resign myself to the fact I’ve lost this money as if I don’t it will make myself miserably unhappy & ill. However, I will persevere with trying to get all or some of of it back if there are any loopholes which may surface. There are comments on Trip Advisor about Films4U and you will see the very good reports at the beginning of the thread but then they go from 4/5 stars to 1 or none as people like myself realise we’ve been ‘had’ and our money stolen! 

Aretnap

pauline_88 said:

There are comments on Trip Advisor about Films4U and you will see the very good reports at the beginning of the thread but then they go from 4/5 stars to 1 or none as people like myself realise we’ve been ‘had’ and our money stolen! 

People review investment products on travel website?s?

It's a feature of investment scams that victims tend to be quite happy during the accumulation phase - as the scheme hasn't collapsed yet there is nothing for them to be unhappy about. So for and fine star reviews are the norm. However on closer reading the reviews say a lot about how nice the website is, how polite the salesman was and how easy overall the process of handing over money to Mr Ponzi was. None of the reviews ever mention the underlying viability of the scheme (which customers do not know about - if they did they wouldn't be customers) let alone the ease of getting their money back from Mr Ponzi. When the scheme collapses the investors start to write bad reviews but by this point it's too late; Mr Ponzi had long since departed with the cash, he is no longer looking for new victims and doesn't care about bad reviews. For this reason, internet reviews on Tristpilot, TripAdviser or anywhere else should never be given and credence when evaluating investment "opportunities", especially non-standard/unregulated ones.

Moneysavy18

This is a scam firm, I use to work there.

it was created by Ed Rowlinson, Josh Rothwell and Robert Kelly. 

They formed a company called - Capital Growth Group. 

I use to work as an account manager, we’d retrieve data (Fluid ISA, Capital Bridge, Barbican ISA, Just ISA to name a few).

for films 4 u, we’d contact our contacts who invested in Fluid ISA to get them to invest into films 4 u. 

All of the above Funds would use capital growth group, who would effectively charge the firms hundreds of thousands for lead data and the funds would pay for it - out of the money you lot invested in. 

You need to call the police really as I bet none of you got your money back. 

Capital Growth Group scammed the funds until there was no money left then we were sacked. I’m sorry to you all I was employed by this company.